Why is a black hole so named? Black holes are volumes of space where gravity is extreme enough to prevent the escape of even the fastest moving particles. Not even light can break free, hence the name ‘black’ hole. Who gave...
Does a white dwarf have high mass? A typical white dwarf is half as massive as the Sun, yet only slightly bigger than Earth. An Earth-sized white dwarf has a density of 1 x 109 kg/m3. Earth itself has an average...
Why white dwarfs are hot? Such stars eventually blow off the material of their outer layers, which creates an expanding shell of gas called a planetary nebula. Within this nebula, the hot core of the star remains—crushed to high density by...
Are white dwarfs the same size as Earth? White dwarfs are usually about the size of Earth and are the cool, dim cores of dead stars that are left behind after average-size stars have exhausted their fuel and shed their outer...
What is the difference between a white dwarf star and a neutron star? White dwarfs are formed from the collapse of low mass stars, less than about 10 time the mass of the Sun. This star loses most of its mass...
How are white dwarf star formed? The vast majority of white dwarfs are formed after a dying star has shed its outer layers to form a planetary nebula, leaving behind an approximately Earth-sized inner core that is the white dwarf. Other...
Is white dwarf denser than neutron star? Earth itself has an average density of only 5.4 x 103 kg/m3. That means a white dwarf is 200,000 times as dense. This makes white dwarfs one of the densest collections of matter, surpassed...
Is a black hole bigger than a white dwarf? A typical white dwarf is about as massive as the Sun, yet only slightly bigger than the Earth. This makes white dwarfs one of the densest forms of matter, surpassed only by...
Are neutron stars that have magnetic fields 100 times stronger than the average neutron star? The curved lines depict the star’s magnetic field, which can average a thousand trillion times stronger than the magnetic field of Earth and 1,000 times stronger...
Why do pulsars slow down? As a hot pulsar cools, its interior increasingly begins to turn superfluid – a state of matter which behaves like a fluid, but without a fluid’s friction or ‘viscosity’. It is this change of state which...